Chapter Six

1
Chapter Six

• The First Two Years
• Cognitive Development

2
Sensorimotor Intelligence

• Sensoritmotor intelligence
• active intelligence causing babies to think while
  using senses and motor skills
• first stage begins at birth and ends about 24
  months

3
Stages 1 and 2 Primary Circular Reactions

• The feedback loop involving the infants own body
  infant senses motion and tries to make sense of
  it
• Stage 1 Reflexes
• Stage 2 First Acquired Adaptations
• adaptations of reflexes, i.e., suckingnew
  information taken in by senses and responded to

4
Stages 1 and 2 Primary Circular Reactions, cont.

• Assimilation and Accommodation
• Assimilation taking in new information by
  incorporating it into previous knowledge
• Accommodation intake of new data to re-adjust,
  refine, expand prior schema or actions
• babies eagerly adapt their reflexes and senses
  to whatever experiences they have
• Sucking as a Stage-Two Adaptation
• begin adapting at about one month
• reflexive assimilation

5
Stages 3 and 4 Secondary Circular Reactions

• Feedback loop involving people and objects
• Stage 3 Making Interesting Events Last
• repetition
• awareness
• Stage 4 New Adaptation and Anticipation
• goal-directed behavior
• object permanence

6
Stages 5 and 6 Tertiary Circular Reactions

• Feedback loop that involves active
  experimentation and exploration
• involves creativity, action, and ideas
• Stage 5 New Means Through Active
  Experimentation
• little scientist
• Stage 6 New Means Through Mental Combinations
• mental combinationssequence of mental actions
  tried out before actual performance
• deferred imitationperception of something
  someone else does (modeling), then performing
  action at a later time

7
The Language Explosion and Early Grammar

• Naming explosion sudden increase in infant
  vocabulary, especially nouns, beginning at 18
  months
• Holophrase single word that expresses a
  complete, meaningful thought
• Grammar all the methods that languages use to
  communicate meaning

8
Theory 1 Infants are Taught

• Skinners reinforcement theory quantity and
  quality of talking to child affects rate of
  language development (learned)
• parents are good instructors
• baby talk characterized by
• high pitch
• simpler vocabulary
• shorter sentence length
• more questions and commands
• repetition
• Heres your bottle, Do you want your rattle?

9
Theory 2 Infants Teach Themselves

• Chomsky and LAD (Language Acquisition
  Device)hypothesized neurological (inborn)
  structure that prewires all children for
  language, including basic aspects of intonation,
  grammar, and vocabulary
• infants innately ready to use their minds to
  understand and speak whatever language offered to
  them
• they are experience expectant
• infants babble ma-ma or da-da sounds not
  necessarily referring to anyone in particular
• mastering language does not need reinforcement or
  teaching all infants need is for dendrites to
  grow

10
Theory Three Social Impulses Foster Language

• Social-pragmaticsocial reason for language to
  communicate
• Infants seek to respond, which shows their being
  social in nature and thus mutually dependentby
• vocalizing
• babbling
• gesturing
• pointing
• Infants communicate in every way because humans
  are social beings, dependent on one another for
  survival.
• Newborns respond to a smile, human voice and
  express language through babble or gestures
  before the age of one.

11
A Hybrid Theory

• Emergentist coalition combination of valid
  aspects of several theories
• cortex contains many language centers
• nature provides several paths to learning
  language
• an example of how a child learns the name of the
  family dog reflects the behavioral theory
  reinforcing the name of the dog. However,
  distinguishing the name between the family pets
  dog and cat may reflect the neurological
  predilection process.
• Studies indicate language is learned depending on
  particular circumstances